Mantralaya fire: Chavan to make govt buildings 'paperless'

Mumbai: Days after a massive fire gutted top floors of the Maharashtra secretariat building, Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan today said there will be a fire audit of all government buildings. Efforts would also be made to achieve paperless offices, he said. “Some offices have already become paperless. In fact, the NRHM (National Rural Health Mission) office is paperless,” Chavan told reporters at Mantralaya after a meeting of the state Cabinet here. [caption id=“attachment_356411” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“All files pertaining to the Adarsh probe are safe, Chavan said. AFP”]  [/caption] “Today, I wish to declare that the Mantralaya has started functioning,” he said. The first three floors of the seven-storey building have been cleared by a team of structural experts for normal functioning, Chavan said. “We will decide on the fourth to sixth floor after structural audit is complete,” he added. “Be it sales tax data or any other data, it is secure in our server. There was no server in Mantralaya as has been reported,” he said. No one will be allowed entry to fourth, fifth and sixth floors as of now, he said. All files pertaining to the Adarsh probe are safe, Chavan said. Work on reconstruction of files damaged in fire and restoring data from hard disks is on, Chavan said. The fire damaged 27 to 29 percent of Mantralaya building, he said. This week, only Mantralaya staffers will be allowed in the building, Chavan said. Visitors can meet concerned ministers at their official residence, he said. The monsoon session of state Legislature will commence on 9 July as scheduled, he said. Work is on to assess the extent of damage due to the fire, Chavan said. “Almost 90 percent of the around 2,000 computers in Mantralaya were damaged in the blaze,” he said. Meanwhile, Chavan today announced an ex-gratia of Rs 25 lakh will be given to the kin of the five persons who lost their lives in the fire. “I have offered government job to the family member of Mohan More, my colleague in the Chief Minister’s office who died in the fire,” Chavan told reporters after the cabinet meeting. He said the other four deceased were visitors who had come to Mantralaya for their work. Chavan said the government will appoint a team of fire experts to assist crime branch in probing the cause of the devastating fire. Crime branch officials have already begun by taking eye witness accounts. The fire experts will assist in finding how the fire started and was controlled, he said. He said file reconstruction has already begun on a war footing. “It is a difficult task but not impossible,“he added. The exact number of files damaged will be known from the Data Journey Management System (DJMS), which tracks the movement of files in the secretariat. He said there is no data server in the damaged portion of Mantralaya and the fire was first noticed in a computer switch. Chavan said the Mantralaya makeover plan was not a priority. He said evacuation of people from Mantralaya was orderly. “Those trapped took individual decisions. My colleague Mohan More had come on the ground floor but again went up to look for Tukaram More,“he said. PTI